Shrimps!!!!

Have a good look at the yellow in a day or two. That sounds like mating  And since the two sakuras are both Neocaridina heteropoda.......

Congratulations" looking forward to hearing about future developments! 

It does help with MTS sufferers if they have husbands/wives who hate fish unless they are cooked on a dinner plate and absolutely refuse to allow any more tanks 

For shrimps, anything from 20 litres up. They can be kept with fish as long as they are carefully chosen. The tank needs a lid as shrimps have been known to climb out, though if the water quality is good, they shouldn't feel the need to escape.
A heater set to the temp the species you buy requires and a filter that doesn't blast the water around. For small shrimp-only tanks, a sponge filter driven by an air pump is ideal. If you want an internal so you can steal media from your other tank, something small with adjustable flow. I have an aqua internal 50, Maidenhead Aquatics own make, in my betta's tank which can be turned so low the flow almost stops.

Plenty of decor is needed, preferably live plants and at least one cave for the shrimps to hide in when they moult (it is instinctive and they still do it when there's nothing else in the tank). You can be as imaginative as you like about the caves 

Food needs to be such as Hikari shrimp cuisine and courgette/cucumber slices. They will also graze on micro-organisms on the decor, if you have something in your main tank you could move over that would be ideal as it will already be covered with bio-film.


The crystal red shrimps you saw prefer soft acidic water. If yours is hard and alkaline you would be better with cherry shrimps, or one of the other colours of Neocaridina hetermorpha (yellow, orange, blue I think, and anything with sakura in the name)

Hi all,

I've sadly lost two more shrimp. A red went missing just before the water change and a yellow, who appeared to have got half way through a moult and then got stuck. Her head and front legs were all stuck in part of her old skin and her legs seemed to be stuck together. She was still alive when I found her with her little back legs kicking frantically. I am going to get something to add to the tank to help with moulting. Why would that have happened do you think?

Otherwise all seems well, although the rest of them seem a bit subdued today and yesterday one of my yellow females (not the one who has died) was doing circuits round and round the tank. I read that this could be because the water was in some way bad, so I tested and nitrite and ammonia both 0 and nitrate about 15. The other thing that was suggested by my reading was that she was preparing to moult. Can anyone confirm this or offer any other suggestions?

I've been struggling with the whole sexing thing but managed to work it out after I found a good picture on line. As far as I can tell I have 2 males (brown and blue) and 8 females. However the two I think are males are small so could be females!?!?!

FC76

When I first got shrimps back in 2013 they all died trying to moult. I found various reasons on-line including insufficient calcium. But Natalia on here said my GH was high enough at 6 deg so it wasn't that. She suggested another cause is a bacterium common in tanks which affects shrimps and although there is medication that can be used she and shrimp breeders prefer to use an immunity booster beta G. I got some from ebay and when it finally arrived (the first pack was lost in the post) I started using it at every water change. It did make a difference.
And for Neocaridina heteropoda, the colours other than red are even more selectively bred than red ones so tend to be more delicate.

If your GH is low, try calcium blocks; if it isn't you could try beta G. A lot of on-line fish shops seem to sell it, google genchem beta g

I would try the beta G.
I also found that shrimps born in my tank did quite well, so maybe emerging into my tank water and growing up in it meant they developed immunity from the start and weren't suddenly exposed to any pathogens as adults.

If you were to get the same filter as I have in my betta's tank (the one in the link), the media is a hollow sponge with carbon inside. You could always swap the carbon for crushed coral. The filter I had in the tank before this one has a sponge about half the size of the new one. I squashed most of the old sponge into the hollow and sliced a bit off the new sponge to make room for the rest of the old one. You could try something similar, filling the hollow with crushed coral and taking a slice off the sponge to make room for some media from your other tank. For just shrimps, checking the new tank could remove 1ppm ammonia in 24 hours would be enough for their bioload.
Glad to hear they were RCS not CRS, as cherries are much the better shrimp for shrimp newbies 



Forgot to mention in the other post - the MA filter has various outflow attachments but the spraybar is the only one that can regulate the flow.









RCS = red cherry shrimp, a variety of Neocaridina heteropoda
CRS = crystal red shrimp, a variety of Caridina cantonensis

Hi shrimpers, I need some advice please!
I've just looked in the shrimp tank and can see what looks like a group of green eggs sitting on my java moss coconut. One of the shrimp was kind of rummaging through them with its legs, but it has now moved away.
The eggs are very small and I can't see anything in them, so I assume they are infertile. Should I move them in case they pollute the water?
Is this a good sign, meaning that they will eventually reproduce, or does it mean that there's something wrong with my shrimp or the tank environment?

If they are shrimp eggs, it would take an awful lot of them to have any significant effect on the water. I'd just leave them. Shrimp eggs stay on the female until they hatch, so they are either infertile, dead or not shrimp eggs.

It is said that young females sometimes drop their early batches of eggs. I think you just need patience